Person-job Fit or Person-organisation Fit - Module 4: Recruitment Process
Topic 1
It is important for both the job applicant and the organisation to ensure that the right job goes to the right person. Taking the wrong job may be just as disastrous for the employee as for the organisation.
Recruitment and selection, therefore, involves the organisation (represented by the manager) and the applicant trying to discover the extent to which their separate interests are likely to be served by the appointment. In other words, it is a two-way process.
There are two different approaches to assessing suitability for a particular job: person-job fit and person-organisation fit. They are based on different assumptions about people and what determines their behaviour at work.
Person-job fit - The traditional approach to recruitment and selection is based on the view that organisations should specify the requirements of the job as closely as possible and then look for individuals whose personal attributes fit those requirements.
It is based on the assumption that human behaviour is determined by factors particular to the individual, and the clear implication is that selection techniques should be concerned with accessing and measuring these personal factors, which can then be compared with those required for the job.
A criticism of the person-job fit is that the nature of jobs change and organisations may benefit more from people who have the capacity to adapt to their changing role within the organisation.
Person-organisation fit - This approach stresses that people's behaviour and performance are strongly influenced by the environment in which they find themselves. So being successful in a job in one organisation does not necessarily imply success in a similar job in another.
In assessing the suitability of a job applicant a manager should explore the reasons why a person has performed well in their existing job and consider whether similar conditions apply in the new job.
Advocates of the person-organisation fit approach stress that an important consideration in recruitment is how suited the applicant is to the organisation - its style, approach, pace of change and informal ways of working. In other words, you need to think beyond whether someone simply has the technical skills to perform in the job and assess their fit with the culture of the organisation.